Spring Break
Everything but government cheese
Times are tough, so stop praying at the church of McDonald's, cut your food costs.
By: Kaitlyn Drinkwater
Issue date: 1/29/09 Section: Opinion
Leaner times mean leaner meals, especially for students who often have little to no income and don't have as much practice with careful budgeting. In case you haven't already been partying like it's 1929, it's time to crack an egg in your Ramen and start counting your pennies.
It might be tempting to resort to an all Ramen and peanut butter diet to survive, but now is not the time to pack on the Recession 15. If you gain a ton of weight now, you will pay for it later. Instead, take this opportunity to learn to live simply and eat smart. The mindset needed to survive these rough times as a student is: reduce, reuse and reheat.
Reduce: cut back on all non-essentials. Do you really need to pay for cable every month? With hulu.com, and numerous websites like it, popular TV can be watched online for free, legally. This should also free up time formerly spent in front of TV. Use this time to cook, and reduce the times per week you eat out.
Do you really need to waste gallons of water bathing every day? That's just money washing down the drain. Embrace nature and put those dollars in your pocket.
Go to every club meeting where there is food, further reducing the meals you have to pay for. It doesn't matter if you couldn't care less about bird watching - if there's free pizza at the meetings, the Aggie Ornithologists are you new best friends.
Reuse: think twice about "trash." Tin foil, plastic baggies and sandwich meat containers can all be rinsed off and used again. Yeah, it's not going to make you a millionaire to save a few pennies, but it might get some meat in your diet.
Buy your books used and sell back your old ones. Better yet, buy and sell with other individuals, that way your resale value will only depreciate as much as if one college student used the book for a semester and not as if it were run over by a Mac truck, forced down a food disposal and finally chewed on by a rabid pit bull.
Re-wear your clothes to avoid laundry and save water (or quarters.) This goes well with the embracing nature aspect discussed above.
Reheat: leftovers are your new best friend. There are guides online about how to feed large families on a tight budget. From now on you are to shop as if yourself and your roommates were a ravenous clan of eight-plus people. What this basically amounts to is buying in bulk, buying on sale and shopping less often.
Cook a lot of something on a weekend when you have the time and store your leftovers in the fridge or freezer. Many things will last for months in the freezer; even cheese or bread can be frozen.
Rice is a good staple because it's cheap and filling. Keep some cooked and in the fridge and eat it with just about everything. When you get tired of eating something, reuse your leftovers in something new. The Internet is your best tool to find recipes to reinvent meals.
We'd all like to return to the good ol' days when Mom cooked for us and we didn't worry about the cost, but unless Obama really is the Messiah (or his brother, or his cousin, or anything, really) we're going to be in this mess for a while. If you remember to reduce, reuse and reheat you can survive this recession without resorting to desperate measures.
It might be tempting to resort to an all Ramen and peanut butter diet to survive, but now is not the time to pack on the Recession 15. If you gain a ton of weight now, you will pay for it later. Instead, take this opportunity to learn to live simply and eat smart. The mindset needed to survive these rough times as a student is: reduce, reuse and reheat.
Reduce: cut back on all non-essentials. Do you really need to pay for cable every month? With hulu.com, and numerous websites like it, popular TV can be watched online for free, legally. This should also free up time formerly spent in front of TV. Use this time to cook, and reduce the times per week you eat out.
Do you really need to waste gallons of water bathing every day? That's just money washing down the drain. Embrace nature and put those dollars in your pocket.
Go to every club meeting where there is food, further reducing the meals you have to pay for. It doesn't matter if you couldn't care less about bird watching - if there's free pizza at the meetings, the Aggie Ornithologists are you new best friends.
Reuse: think twice about "trash." Tin foil, plastic baggies and sandwich meat containers can all be rinsed off and used again. Yeah, it's not going to make you a millionaire to save a few pennies, but it might get some meat in your diet.
Buy your books used and sell back your old ones. Better yet, buy and sell with other individuals, that way your resale value will only depreciate as much as if one college student used the book for a semester and not as if it were run over by a Mac truck, forced down a food disposal and finally chewed on by a rabid pit bull.
Re-wear your clothes to avoid laundry and save water (or quarters.) This goes well with the embracing nature aspect discussed above.
Reheat: leftovers are your new best friend. There are guides online about how to feed large families on a tight budget. From now on you are to shop as if yourself and your roommates were a ravenous clan of eight-plus people. What this basically amounts to is buying in bulk, buying on sale and shopping less often.
Cook a lot of something on a weekend when you have the time and store your leftovers in the fridge or freezer. Many things will last for months in the freezer; even cheese or bread can be frozen.
Rice is a good staple because it's cheap and filling. Keep some cooked and in the fridge and eat it with just about everything. When you get tired of eating something, reuse your leftovers in something new. The Internet is your best tool to find recipes to reinvent meals.
We'd all like to return to the good ol' days when Mom cooked for us and we didn't worry about the cost, but unless Obama really is the Messiah (or his brother, or his cousin, or anything, really) we're going to be in this mess for a while. If you remember to reduce, reuse and reheat you can survive this recession without resorting to desperate measures.
Be sure to include your name, major, and class year. Submissions without this information are subject to deletion.
By submitting a comment, you agree to thebatt.com's Terms of Use.
You may also send a Mail Call to The Battalion at mailcall@thebatt.com